Betty is currently doing research for Don't Tell Mary, a biography of Frank Šery--and the prequel to Butterflies, Scarabs and Secrets.
Mary and Frank, May 15, 1915
May 15, 2015, was Frank and Mary Šery's 100th wedding anniversary—and my research continues. I returned from a tour of Northeast Nebraska, interviewing some of those who have retained memories of Frank and Mary from the 1950's and 1960s. So many gracious people from Stanton, Leigh, Madison, and Norfolk, Nebraska gave me their time from busy schedules to reminisce and add colorful descriptions of my grandparents or to give me insight into the old-time farming resources and practices.
...Sometime in the mid 1950’s, Mary Šery walked out her front door to the dirt yard of her two-room farmhouse outside of Madison, Nebraska, and killed one of her chickens. “She packed mud around the whole feathered chicken—entrails and all. Mary brought the chicken inside to the kitchen, put it into the old wood-burning oven, and baked it until she knew it was just right. The feathers came right off and it was the juiciest ever," says Tim Schulz, deputy sheriff of Madison County, remembering his visits to Frank and Mary Šery’s farm and their hospitality when he was a young boy.
Thank you Addie Schmitz, Carol Robertson, Lois Peterson, Gary White, Tim Schmitz, Loren Loseke, Jake Helz who offered their memories to my research. I also thank the librarians in Stanton (Laura Hess and Carol Armbruster) who gave me helpful reference material and purchased my book for their library collection. The Madison library also added my book to its shelves.
Jumping backwards from the 1950s, I now go to the last part of the nineteenth century to learn what was happening in Moravia to cause my grandfather to leave there and how he managed to cross the Atlantic to a foreign land in 1910.
...Sometime in the mid 1950’s, Mary Šery walked out her front door to the dirt yard of her two-room farmhouse outside of Madison, Nebraska, and killed one of her chickens. “She packed mud around the whole feathered chicken—entrails and all. Mary brought the chicken inside to the kitchen, put it into the old wood-burning oven, and baked it until she knew it was just right. The feathers came right off and it was the juiciest ever," says Tim Schulz, deputy sheriff of Madison County, remembering his visits to Frank and Mary Šery’s farm and their hospitality when he was a young boy.
Thank you Addie Schmitz, Carol Robertson, Lois Peterson, Gary White, Tim Schmitz, Loren Loseke, Jake Helz who offered their memories to my research. I also thank the librarians in Stanton (Laura Hess and Carol Armbruster) who gave me helpful reference material and purchased my book for their library collection. The Madison library also added my book to its shelves.
Jumping backwards from the 1950s, I now go to the last part of the nineteenth century to learn what was happening in Moravia to cause my grandfather to leave there and how he managed to cross the Atlantic to a foreign land in 1910.